Monthly Archives: September 2012

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But in business and law, snitches get riches. A whistleblower banker at UBS who gave the IRS information about how the bank helped wealthy Americans hide assets was given a taste of the bounty. If you want to call $104 million a taste, that is. [CNNMoney]

Bradley Birkenfeld’s tips helped pave the way for a 2009 settlementbetween the U.S. government and UBS (UBS) under which the bank agreed to pay $780 million in penalties and turn over the account information of thousands of U.S. clients.

Over 35,000 Americans have since participated in amnesty programs to repatriate their offshore accounts, netting the government over $5 billion in back taxes, fines and penalties, Birkenfeld’s lawyers said in a statement Tuesday.

The IRS confirmed Birkenfeld’s reward but declined to comment in detail about the case.

The award is believed to be the first big award given by the IRS Whistleblower Office, which started in 2007.

Not that Birkenfeld hasn’t paid for it. He was sent to prison for 3 1/3 years for his participation in UBS’s program, a story portrayed in this CBS 60 Minutespiece.

Some of the more significant changes: judges may allow discussion among jurors about evidence during trial recesses and note taking. Juries may request views of crime scenes or other relevant locations. Judges are required to provide copies of the jury instructions to jurors when they retire for final deliberations.

NCSC Vice President and General Counsel Robert Baldwin will present the award to the Court and pilot project judges following the Court’s first oral argument on October 9. The ceremony will take place at 10:45 a.m. in the old Supreme Court courtroom in the state Capitol building.

Born Sept. 15, 1955, in Highland Park, Mr. Cruse, a Rochester resident, was a partner at Warner Norcross & Judd LLP’s Southfield branch, where he specialized in business reorganization, bankruptcy and debtor-creditor relations, commercial law and litigation.

He graduated from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law in 1985.

Prior to his legal career, Mr. Cruse served nearly 10 years as a police officer for Bloomfield Township, and stayed as a volunteer reserve officer with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department while a lawyer.

In 2010, Mr. Cruse was named one of Michigan Lawyers Weekly’s 25 “Leaders in the Law.”

Outside of law, he founded the Embrace the Day Foundation, an organization to raise awareness and funds for the cure to pancreatic cancer. He also enjoyed long cruises on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Mr. Cruse is survived by his wife, Jane; two children, Aaron and Natalie; his mother, Mary; two brothers, Walter and Jeffrey; one sister, Elena Borrie; and extended family.

A memorial service was held Aug. 8 at St. Andrew Catholic Church in Rochester.

Katherine Gullo, the clerk of the Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan wants you to know that the court’s Electronic Case Files (ECF) system will be out of commission on Thursday, Sept. 20 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Update: ECF system will be unavailable on Saturday, Sept. 29, 2012 from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m..

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts will be making changes to PACER-net at that time.

“Judge Kingsley has exemplified, without lapse, the high standards of professional conduct and scholarship we ask all in our profession to aspire to,” said former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Alton Davis.

Kingsley, a Calhoun county circuit judge since 1982, served as the court’s chief judge from 1984 to 1993.

Kingsley’s colleague and current Chief Judge, Hon. Allen L. Garbrecht, said, “Judge Kingsley – by his words and his actions – has shown me how an outstanding trial judge should act on the bench, off the bench, and in the community. I have been blessed to be his colleague.”

Kingsley’s service to the legal community and the community-at-large includes lecturing and consulting for the Michigan Judicial Institute, lecturing for the Institute for Continuing Legal Education and lecturing at Albion College.

Albion College president Dr. Donna M. Randall noted that Judge Kingsley’s “capacity to understand the depth and nuances of politics is exceptional. Equally impressive is his ability to frame the issues in ways that students understand.”

She also noted that he was well rounded, as evidenced by his membership in the Albion College Athletic Hall of Fame.

The award is named in honor of the late Judge Hilda Gage, who served on the Court of Appeals and the Oakland County Circuit Court.

Recipients are current and former circuit court and Court of Appeals judges who have excelled in trial and docket management, legal scholarship, and contributions to the profession and the community.

The award also honors judges who serve their profession and their communities with integrity, skill, and courage.

Throughout the metro area, there’s a class of people living in despair, hoping, praying that they aren’t one of the select few sentenced to 18 weeks of hard time on the Kwame Kilpatrick jury.

Yes, finally, after years of drama, including a civil trial, hundreds of text messages, a never-to-be-satisfied restitution order, two prison stays, a book, and more charges than the San Fermin Festival, jury selection in Kilpatrick’s public corruption trial has begun in front of U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds. [In case you’ve forgotten what Kilpatrick is accused of this time around, the indictment can be found here.]

“Race is 90 percent of this trial,” local political consultant Adolph Mongo said. “Race will overshadow anything and everything that comes out in the first week or two of this trial.”

Evidence, shmevidence. Who can argue with that?

Snell’s article focuses on the racial component of jury selection, which was an issue in the Bobby Ferguson case. Snell notes that the prosecutions of Sam Riddle and Bobby Ferguson,f or corruption and bid rigging, were derailed by a single juror, in both cases an African-American woman.

In the Freep, Tresa Baldas takes a different view, looking at the possibility of something that may or may not actually exist: the stealth juror, defined as a person who will lie to get on the jury because they have a bone to pick with either side, or just because they want to be famous. This makes complete sense. I mean, remember that juror from the O.J. Simpson trial, or the Casey Anthony trial? Yeah, me neither. Perhaps they should warn of the “stealth attorney” because they are the ones that tend to become famous from big trials. The lesson, Stealth Juror, is that book you’re thinking of writing? No one cares. Kwame himself wrote a book. It’s being used to balance uneven tables at bookstores across the state.

Baldas wrote that sniffing out hidden agendas can be tough:

The prospective jurors already have filled out questionnaires, and their answers have cleared the initial bias hurdle with both sides.

Experts note that uncovering any hidden biases is the tricky part, and jurors with hidden agendas could sneak their way onto the panel.

Gov. Rick Snyder’s Sept. 5th appointment of Sabrina Johnson to the Inkster-based 22nd District Court could result in one of the shortest stays on the bench since Justice Alton Davis’s four-month stint on the Michigan Supreme Court in 2010.

Or it may be just the boost she needs to keep the job past the Jan. 1, 2013 expiration of her appointment.

Johnson, a long-time Wayne County assistant prosecutor with deep Inkster roots, was named to fill an opening created when the MSC removed Sylvia James from the bench on July 31 for misconduct. The Court found that James engaged in financial, administrative and employment improprieties, and then misrepresented the state of affairs to the Judicial Tenure Commission.

MSC Chief Justice Robert Young and Justice Stephen Markman voted with a unanimous Court to throw James off the bench. But they wanted even more. In a separate opinion, they argued in vain that James should be made to sit on the judicial election sidelines for six years. The two justices feared that James would simply run again and reclaim a seat on the very court she had just been booted from.

Seven days after being removed from the bench, James topped a field of eight contenders In the Aug. 7 primary for the 22nd District Court.

Here’s where the plot thickens. Johnson was also on the primary ballot. She finished second.

Johnson, now freshly appointed until the end of the year to fill the balance of James’ term, needs to win the November election or she’ll surrender the seat back to James.

A victory for James will give her the opportunity to thumb her nose at everyone who had anything to do with getting her kicked off the court. Young and Markman’s worst nightmares will come true.

Johnson will be listed on the ballot as an incumbent judge. James won’t. That usually does the trick in judicial elections and goes a long way in explaining Snyder’s appointment of Johnson.

But being forced from the bench for misusing public funds and telling whoppers to the authorities normally spells the end of a judicial career.

Except in Inkster, where some voters, caught up in a cult of personality, are apparently willing to reward James’ misconduct with another six-year term.

The court unanimously OKd the following initiatives, finding that they wouldn’t negate, nullify or abrogate other constitutional provisions:

Protect Our Jobs, which would amend the state constitution to guarantee collective bargaining rights for public employees;

The People Should Decide, which would require a popular vote for any new international bridge, and;

Michigan Alliance for Prosperity, which would require a 2/3 vote to raise taxes.

The one initiative for which the Court wouldn’t grant the order of mandamus was Citizens for More Michigan Jobs, which would allow for eight new casinos in Michigan. The court found that the proposal would have nullified the Liquor Control Commission’s control over liquor licenses granted to it in the Michigan Constitution. The court split 4-3 on this initiative in the usual manner.

From today’s Macomb Daily comes word of big, spiffy yellow signs, with Warren Mayor Jim Fouts’ name prominently displayed on them, which prohibit smoking within 100 feet of city buildings on which the signs are displayed.

The signs are a big problem for Chief Judge John Chmura of the 37th District Court, who ordered them removed from the court building almost as soon as they were put up.

Chmura fumed that there is no ordinance to back up Fouts’ unilateral edict, issued in a mayoral order last week.

“[W]e can’t have one person deciding things like this on his own. If there is a law out there that says you can’t smoke within 100 feet of our court, I have no problem with that,” the Macomb Daily quotes Chmura about Fouts’ signs.

Tough to quibble with that. But Fouts blew some smoke of his own.

“To me, this reinforces the idea that some judges think they are above moral law and the law of the land,” said Fouts of Chmura’s decision to take down the courthouse signs.

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